Safe City Ch.30

Chapter 30: Demolition and Garbage Collection

Blue Sea had actually been able to advance to Tier 3 for quite some time.

However, just as she had learned back when the city was Tier 1, both Meow Meow and Blue Leaf had told her that Tier 3 was a major turning point.

Starting from Tier 3, not only would some residents awaken supernatural abilities, but the city could also upgrade and remodel certain buildings within the Safe City as part of the advancement process.

The only requirement was to prepare sufficient materials before leveling up.

“Normally, you can upgrade buildings inside the city at any time. But if you do it as part of a city advancement, you won’t need any crystals.”

That was fantastic news.

Cheng Qisheng had once tried upgrading individual buildings, but the number of crystal required was so outrageous that she felt it would be cheaper to just build a new structure from scratch.

Meow Meow strongly recommended that she take advantage of this opportunity to upgrade any city buildings that were eligible for improvement.

She accepted the suggestion.

However, upgrading buildings alongside the city’s advancement came with conditions. First, the necessary materials had to be prepared in advance. Second, every resident living in the buildings scheduled for renovation had to evacuate beforehand.

Because all upgrades and renovations would be completed simultaneously during the city’s advancement, a large number of residents would need to leave the Safe City before the process began.

Aether had been busy with exactly this work lately. Together with Blue Sea’s chief planning team, it needed to analyze and calculate:

Which buildings should be upgraded?

Should they simply be advanced to higher-tier versions of their current designs, or should they be redesigned and re-planned?

How many materials would be required to accomplish all of this?

The residents were busy as well.

Not only were they exploring all over Mianyan City, but they were also dismantling one surviving building after another and hauling the salvaged materials back to Blue Sea Safe City.

Cheng Qisheng could only be thankful that the Holy Bullet’s “erase everything” effect had a limited range. Mianyan City was enormous, and the Tier 3 zombie had previously wandered only around the city’s outskirts.

As a result, there were still plenty of buildings left standing that could be dismantled. Most of them were dangerously unstable structures, but that was no challenge for Blue Sea’s demolition crew.

One vine-covered skyscraper after another disappeared from Mianyan City as huge quantities of construction materials were hauled back to Blue Sea. Among them were cracked chunks of concrete dug out of the ruins, broken bricks, bent steel rebar, and other debris.

Blue Leaf confidently insisted that these could all count as construction materials. The only catch was that several pieces of equally damaged material might need to be combined before they would be considered one complete unit.

“Just pile all this scrap together and pretend it’s a building. As long as there’s enough of it, the advancement process will automatically recognize it as construction material.”

Blue Leaf spoke with a perfectly serious expression, never mentioning that it had discovered this particular “bug” because the Blue Leaf Dynasty was considered poor compared to other modern Safe Cities.

Poor in the sense that its citizens lacked material goods.

Not the kind of poverty caused by the apocalypse, but the ordinary poverty of a traditional feudal kingdom.

When Blue Leaf Safe City had first descended into a modern disaster world, the landscape had been covered in ruins. Other Safe Cities found the rubble to be an eyesore, but the people of the Blue Leaf Dynasty had been delighted, feeling as though treasures were scattered everywhere.

A single nail. A metal frame. A warped iron gate. Massive chunks of concrete stronger than bricks.

These were all things that didn’t exist in their ancient society.

Most importantly, they were completely free.

As a result, the citizens of the Blue Leaf Dynasty began enthusiastically scavenging junk and carrying it back into their Safe City.

To them, even an ordinary plastic bottle or a torn woven sack was incredibly useful.

So after Blue Leaf seized control of the court through force and its expulsion authority, it won the wholehearted support of the common people with surprising ease.

Because the citizens of the Blue Leaf Dynasty didn’t feel that life after the apocalypse was any harder than it had been before.

Sure, there were many dangers, and people died.

But hadn’t people died all the time before the apocalypse as well?

Back then, there had been countless causes of death:

Oppressive taxes and levies.

The hardships of farming.

Corrupt officials.

Exploitation and ab*se.

Wealthy landowners who treated them like sl*ves.

After the apocalypse, inside the Safe City, all of those things were gone.

The current Emperor had only two requirements for his subjects:

Stay alive. Obey orders.

Wasn’t that fantastic?

As a result, Blue Leaf’s early development progressed quite rapidly. The residents were highly motivated to venture out, fight, and bring back supplies. They often went hungry, but they were already used to hunger anyway.

At least it wasn’t like before, when they worked the fields themselves, only to watch the government take away most of the harvest while they couldn’t even eat a full meal.

Now, everyone went out and searched for resources on their own. Whatever they found was theirs to eat. Naturally, they felt far less resentment.

Unless they were starving so badly that they couldn’t even get a bowl of tree-bark soup, the people of Blue Leaf weren’t going to rebel.

Later, even after Blue Leaf acquired cement-production technology and modern brick-making methods, the residents still treasured those pieces of “junk.”

Living in newly constructed modern buildings required spending crystals.

But living in shelters built from their own scavenged “treasures” was far better than a straw hut at blocking wind and rain—and it didn’t cost a single crystal.

What a bargain.

It wasn’t until Blue Leaf accumulated a substantial reserve of crystals and realized that many residents were dying from illness that it began a large-scale infrastructure campaign.

Rows of cement dormitories were built.

Although they were still communal bunkhouses, the living conditions were much better than the drafty shacks residents had thrown together themselves. Most importantly, they were free.

And as always, the residents were extremely enthusiastic about anything free.

Large numbers of people moved into the dormitories. As they gradually became more familiar with the modern world, they also began looking down on the construction debris they had once regarded as treasure.

Mainly because they now had something better.

That said, expecting these residents to develop environmental awareness and voluntarily throw away the junk they had painstakingly collected was completely unrealistic.

So the makeshift houses built from scavenged materials remained piled up in random corners of the city.

Blue Leaf Safe City didn’t have a large population, space wasn’t an issue, and construction materials didn’t rot or smell, so the government never bothered dealing with them.

As far as the court was concerned, as long as the residents stayed alive and kept fighting, nothing else mattered.

Then, when Blue Leaf advanced to Tier 3, it made a surprising discovery:

Where did all these extra construction materials come from?

Those heaps of abandoned “junk” had all been counted as usable building materials by the system.

He clearly remembered not having that many materials.

But since they were there, he used them.

Then, after the advancement was complete, reports began making their way up through the bureaucracy, one layer at a time:

“Your Majesty, the piles of construction debris that were scattered around the Safe City have suddenly disappeared. Do you happen to know why?”

Blue Leaf: !

After discovering this secret, he hadn’t told a single person.

Not even his former allies.

Blue Leaf suspected that some other Tier 3 or higher Safe Cities had probably discovered the same trick, but everyone had tacitly agreed not to publicize it.

After all, if other people didn’t know that junk could be used as building materials while he did, wasn’t that basically getting a head start?

But after careful consideration, Blue Leaf decided to share this secret with Blue Sea, which was about to advance to Tier 3.

Blue Sea was simply too powerful.

And she had also been far too friendly.

Blue Leaf felt that the benefits he had provided to Blue Sea were nowhere near the level of help Blue Sea had given him.

Of course, Blue Sea had never once suggested that she wanted anything in return.

But the less she asked for, the more uneasy Blue Leaf became.

In his view, relationships based on mutual interests were the strongest relationships in the world.

His thinking went like this:

If I can’t provide you with any benefits, how can I fully trust that you won’t harm me?

Then:

All right, let’s think about it. What’s the greatest benefit I can offer you?

And then:

Ah! My Safe City’s core, of course!

The troubling part was that, with Blue Sea’s current strength, if she truly wanted to destroy Blue Leaf Safe City, it would be easier than killing a Tier 4 zombie.

That left Blue Leaf both anxious and insecure.

On one hand, he worried that Blue Sea might simply be fattening up a pig before slaughtering it.

On the other hand, if the kindness Blue Sea had shown was genuine, then he absolutely did not want to lose such a powerful and benevolent ally.

He desperately wanted to demonstrate his value to Blue Sea.

He wanted to provide her with benefits.

He wanted her to realize that he was actually useful.

Blue Leaf didn’t know whether this was what Blue Sea wanted.

But no matter how he looked at it, this seemed to be the only path available to him right now.

So Blue Leaf told Blue Sea everything about the trick—that construction debris and scrap materials could be combined and counted as normal building materials.

In return, he received Blue Sea’s sincere thanks.

[Blue Sea Safe City]: Thank you, Blue Leaf. Telling me something this important will save me a lot of trouble. =v=

Blue Leaf immediately felt much more at ease.

From that day on, Blue Sea Safe City began hauling back not only intact building materials but also every usable piece of construction debris from the ruins.

The demolition teams and transport crews worked tirelessly, laboring away until they reached the area around the building where the Long-Tendril being was living.

The team assigned to observe the Long-Tendril being was dumbfounded.

How long had they been gone?

How had Blue Sea gone from fighting zombies to carrying out demolition projects?

The team leader sent someone to ask around, only to learn that the entire city was currently obsessed with demolition and garbage collection.

The demolition crews knew nothing about the Long-Tendril being’s existence. Their orders were simple:

If a building was unoccupied, tear it down.

If someone was living there, leave it alone.

Since someone lived in this one, they could simply go around it.

One building more or less didn’t matter.

So the Blue Sea demolition team grunted and sweated their way around the Long-Tendril being’s building and continued working elsewhere.

With all that commotion, there was no way the Long-Tendril being could fail to notice.

When the Blue Sea workers began demolishing the building next door, it stood by the empty window frame—there was no actual window left—and looked down at them from above.

The observation team continued carrying out their duties diligently, watching the Long-Tendril being and recording a new entry in their report:

“Shows interest in demolition activities.”

Eventually, every piece of construction material that Blue Sea could find was transported back to the Safe City.

When Cheng Qisheng took out the Tier 4 crystal and prepared to advance the city—

the observation team’s leader noticed something alarming.

The Long-Tendril being had fallen ill.

The reason was simple.

The temperature in Mianyan City had dropped.

Previously, the Long-Tendril being had only nailed a few wooden boards over the broken windows. They didn’t completely seal the openings, and gaps still let the wind through.

Then it rained one night.

The temperature fell sharply.

The next day, its beard tendrils began to droop, and its white beard turned red.

After that—

it could no longer get out of bed.

The team leader was completely shocked.

“Wait, what? You’re covered head to toe in beard-like tendrils, and you still get sick just from a temperature drop?”

Now the question was serious.

Their mission was to observe the Long-Tendril being—and according to their superior, this task was a divine revelation from the Great Creator God.

So if they were ordered to observe it, that meant it was supposed to stay alive… right?

But what were they supposed to do if the observation target was about to die?

The team leader scratched his head anxiously. His first instinct was to report back and ask for instructions, but the nearest route back to Blue Sea Safe City would still take at least two days.

By the time a messenger went there and came back, wouldn’t the Long-Tendril being already be dead?

The will of the deity must mean it should remain alive.

He simply couldn’t come up with a solution.

In desperation, he began to pray devoutly in his heart, hoping that the great divine being would grant him guidance.

—Meanwhile, the “great divine being” was currently busy advancing the Safe City, working together with the city’s AI core to rapidly integrate buildings and prepared materials, expanding and upgrading everything at once.

After finishing his prayer, the team leader waited.

No divine revelation came.

He didn’t consider the possibility that the god might simply be busy and unavailable.

Is this… a test from the deity?

Even without receiving any response, he decided that this, too, must be a form of divine trial.

Clenching his teeth, he made a decision.

“Go. While it’s asleep, let’s help seal up its window.”

So when the Long-Tendril being woke up, it discovered that the window that had always let in cold wind had somehow been sealed. There was even a sheet of plastic left on it, which could be peeled open for ventilation if needed.

But it was still sick.

Dragging its weakened body, it got up and tried to find some water to soak itself.

The monitoring team sent by Blue Sea watched it for hours before realizing what it was looking for.

“Go! Pour a bucket of the water we found and place it on its path back!”

When the Long-Tendril being failed to find any water source and trudged back toward the building, exhausted—

it discovered a bucket of “wild” water waiting on the road.

The Long-Tendriled Person silently stared at the items for a long time. In the end, it still carried the water back into the building.

The next day, after soaking in the water, it felt somewhat better and decided to go out and look for blankets to keep warm.

It had been raining; dry grass would have become damp, so it likely wouldn’t be easy to find anything useful.

But the moment it opened the door—

there were several quilts piled right outside. Along with buckets of water, some food, a stack of firewood… and even a chimney pipe for ventilation.

This time, the Long-Tendril being fell into silence for even longer.

The observation team leader, perched in a distant tree, watched as the creature slowly dragged everything back inside with satisfaction.

“Good. This should keep it from dying now.”

From that day on, the Long-Tendril being went outside every morning.

It spent most of its time outdoors, and the observation team diligently recorded all its behaviors.

But one day, suddenly—it didn’t come out.

“…Did it get sick again?” the leader muttered.

With the windows sealed, they couldn’t check inside anymore.

After some discussion, they decided to go and take a look. If it was sick, they would just quickly place it in water again to treat it.

The group crept over and, very familiar with the place by now, quietly pushed open the door.

And then—

they saw the corpse of the old Long-Tendril being.

It was dry and shriveled, lying inside the clean blankets they had painstakingly gathered, its beard-like tendrils wrapped around a bucket of water.

The observation team’s minds completely froze. They rushed forward to check if it could still be saved, only to notice what was inside the bucket.

Their eyes widened instantly.

“MY GOD!”

Meanwhile—

Cheng Qisheng, who had just finished her work, also widened her eyes.

What have my followers brought me now?

She looked at the observation team members wrapped in blankets like swaddled infants.

Inside the “swaddling cloth” was a bucket.

Inside the bucket—

a small Long-Tendril being was sleeping peacefully.

The observers wore expressions of absolute panic—What do we do, O Divine One?!—as they took turns carrying the bucket, urgently heading back toward Blue Sea Safe City.

<< _ >>